Month: July 2022

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

The software framework has become essential to developing almost all complex software these days. The Django Web framework, for instance, bundles all the libraries, image files, and other components needed to quickly build and deploy web apps, making it a mainstay at companies like Google, Spotify, and Pinterest. Frameworks provide a platform that performs common functions like logging and authentication shared across an app ecosystem.

Last week, researchers from security firm Intezer revealed the Lightning Framework, a modular malware framework for Linux that has gone undocumented until now. Lightning Framework is post-exploit malware, meaning it gets installed after an attacker has already gained access to a targeted machine. Once installed, it can provide some of the same efficiencies and speed to Linux compromises that Django provides for web development.

“It is rare to see such an intricate framework developed for targeting Linux systems,” Ryan Robinson, a security researcher at Intezer, wrote in a post. “Lightning is a modular framework we discovered that has a plethora of capabilities, and the ability to install multiple types of rootkit, as well as the capability to run plugins.”

Martin Shkreli being photographed for his role as CIO of MSMB Capital Management. (credit: Getty Images)

Martin Shkreli—the notorious ex-pharmaceutical executive fresh from prison after his 2017 fraud conviction—announced his latest, eyebrow-raising venture Monday: creating a blockchain-based "Web3 drug discovery platform" that traffics in his own cryptocurrency, MSI, aka Martin Shkreli Inu.

The platform, still in the early development phase, is called Druglike, according to a press release that circulated Monday. The platform's goals are ostensibly lofty, but the details are extremely sketchy, and Shkreli's intentions have already drawn skepticism. It's also unclear if the enterprise will run Shkreli afoul of his lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry, which stemmed from the abrupt and callous 4,000 percent price hike of a life-saving drug that made him infamous.

Shkreli, who is named as a co-founder of Druglike, says the platform aims to make early-stage drug discovery more affordable and accessible. "Druglike will remove barriers to early-stage drug discovery, increase innovation and allow a broader group of contributors to share the rewards," Shkreli said in the press release. "Underserved and underfunded communities, such as those focused on rare diseases or in developing markets, will also benefit from access to these tools."

Enlarge / The James Webb Space Telescope continues to deliver on its promises on discovering early galaxies. (credit: NASA)

Data from the Webb Space Telescope has only gotten into the hands of astronomers over the last few weeks, but they've been waiting for years for this, and apparently had analyses set to go. The result has been something like a race back in time, as new discoveries find objects that formed ever closer to the Big Bang that produced our Universe. Last week, one of these searches turned up a galaxy that was present less than 400 million years after the Big Bang. This week, a new analysis has picked out a galaxy as it appeared only 233 million years after the Universe popped into existence.

The discovery is a happy byproduct of work that was designed to answer a more general question: How many galaxies should we expect to see at different time points after the Big Bang?

Back in time

As we mentioned last week, the early Universe was opaque to light at any wavelengths that carry more energy than is needed to ionize hydrogen. That energy is in the UV portion of the spectrum, but the red shift caused by 13 billion years of an expanding Universe has shifted that cutoff point into the infrared portion of the spectrum. To find galaxies from this time, we have to look for objects that aren't visible at shorter infrared wavelengths (meaning that light was once above the hydrogen cutoff), but do appear at lower-energy wavelengths.

Enlarge / Logitech G713 keyboard. (credit: Scharon Harding)

In an explosion of color, Logitech today announced a bunch of PC peripherals draped in light shades, wireless options, and, love it or hate it, RGB lighting.

Logitech's calling it the Aurora Collection, and while the gadgets are aimed at gamers, high programmability and premium features can make them interesting to general power users, too.

Logitech's Aurora Collection includes a broad range of PC peripherals and accessories. (credit: Logitech)

The new series is characterized by trendy white colors intensified by RGB LEDs and high price tags. The series includes the G735 wireless headset ($230), the G705 wireless mouse ($100), the G713 mechanical keyboard ($170), and its wireless version, the G715 ($200). There are also Aurora PC accessories, including top plates and keycaps for the keyboards and new Aurora colors for some of Logitech's previously released microphones.

Enlarge (credit: Scharon Harding)

If you're not a frequent ChromeOS user, determining an in-hand Chromebook's specs can be tricky. Many Chromebook users are satisfied just using the machines to surf the web and, thus, don't often have a need to check on things like processor model or memory usage. As a result, this information can seem a bit buried.

But sometimes you want to know how much RAM a Chromebook is using, what CPU it has and whether it's maxing its cores, or how much storage remains. Whether you're troubleshooting a slower Chromebook, teaching someone about their ChromeOS device, wondering if a Chromebook could support Steam, or just want to get to know a Chromebook better, here are the simplest ways to look at the basic hardware specs of a Chromebook.

How to check Chromebook CPU usage

If a Chromebook is running slowly, it could be helpful to check CPU usage to see how hard the processor is working and which apps it's using that are the most taxing.